Does science change?

[NobleMouse]

You do. Unless you reject the "life ex nihilism" doctrine of YE creationism, you reject God's creation.

I disapprove of the unobserved assertions made by science... unless there are documented cases of scientists running about the earth while it was being created - watching God as He laid down the foundations of the earth (albeit, absent of Job), watching dinosaurs becoming fossilized, humans etc...

Oh, the creationist straw man. That's not what science says.

No no, science does say God didn't do it (at all in fact)... nearly 70% of scientists do not believe in the God of the Christian Bible (Pew Research, 2009). I take it you go along with the general ideas of BioLogos where what mainstream secular science asserts is true and then we just prefix and suffix God where it seems appropriate to fill gaps in an effort to mesh the creation account in Genesis with science?

Evolution isn't about the way life began.

Abiogenesis is the conceptual mechanism that secular science uses to explain how life began (though never has been replicated, including the Lenski experiments). Evolution; however, asserts that from the first primordial molecule, all life arose, creating new, super complex protein chains with left- and right-handed DNA and biological mechanisms that know how to interpret billions of base pairs... oh what a fantastical and amusing story - I dare say more 'magical' than the idea that God created functional life forms like we see, from the beginning, as is written in His word.

Evolution never makes something completely new. It's always a modification of something already there.

But it must make something new, you cannot arrive at you and me from a molecule without something new along the way.

And homologies, genetics, observed speciations, the large number of transitional forms, and so on. Even morecompelling, this evidence for descent never occurs where it's not predicted to be.

DNA does not last very long after death has occurred, so I doubt genetics is coming into play on fossils found from 10's or 100's of millions of years ago. Homology is what I described (it looks similar), and speciation are just subtle changes to adapt to the environment; however, does not accumulate to result in a new life form (ex. molecule is now... a bird!).

Let's test your belief. Name any two major groups, said to be evolutionarily connected, and I'll see if I can find a transitional. Let's see what you've got.

That would only demonstrate the volume of work scientists have done in connecting what they believe is related. I don't doubt that a lot of work, time, and energy has been invested in developing a story of origins without needing God at the center of that story. Would we not expect anatomical similarities having been created by God for life in a common environment, namely the planet Earth?

Since it's been observed to happen, that's too bad for them. But if you'd like to post these well-qualified biologists and their claims, we can talk about it. What do you have?

Nope, nobody ever saw a molecule become a bird. Here's a list (downloadable), including some biologists who have issue with the ideas of random mutation and natural selection in creating life as we see today:
https://dissentfromdarwin.org/

If you think so, you missed a lot here. As you see, there are many independent sources of data confirming evolution.

Again, I don't doubt the volume of work or that it has been developed into a very technical ("scientific") field of study. My doubt arises in the foundational presuppositions, which were clearly not developed on a Biblical framework. But why should science conduct itself on a Biblical framework, with nearly 70% not believing in God? Interestingly, there are a number of atheists, who are scientists, who also find issue with the assertions made under Darwinian evolution - they certainly wouldn't be pushing any kind of religious agenda.

Being omnipotent, God can use contingency as easily as He can use necessity to His purposes. You're selling God short if you doubt it.

"...time and chance happeneth to them all."

I don't doubt God works all things together for His purposes, but you bring up Ecclesiastes 9:11 out of context here as if to support random mutation as part of God's purpose. If God purposes something it, by definition, is not random (that is, it is purposed).

Doesn't use the word "proton", either. Do you have a point?

Here was the statement I made: "The Bible does not use the word 'evolution' or describe a process that sounds like what science describes today, is true."

The point was: "That said, omission of an idea doesn't make it true either just because there is an open window to trying inserting..." To expound, I was indicating that just because the Bible does not fill in all imaginable information from the creation events recorded in Genesis, this is not an open invitation where we can just invent and insert anything that sounds good. The foundational beliefs by evolution were not developed by Biblically-centered individuals that believe the Bible has historic accuracy (clearly), so ideas of billions of years, evolution, uniformitarinism were all developed in disregard to God's word (clearly), and now we have those that follow something along the lines of theistic evolution and are having to do mental gymnastics to try retrofitting what scripture says with what man says (clearly).

It can mean "forever", "always", "in that time", and so on. The Genesis narrative indicates categories of creation, as early Christian theologians wrote.

Yom can only mean different scopes of time on the basis of it's context, just as with our language. I can say 'Christmas day' and it means a single day, or 'back in the day' and it mean a period of time. Question is, what's the context of yom in Genesis? Answer: "...And there was evening and there was morning, the first day... the second day, etc...)". Science likes to use terms like "the dawn of time..." but nobody uses day with evening and morning and day 1, day 2, day 3... day 7 to represent billions of years. Again, I understand this is one of the places where the mental gymnastics must come into play.

Some of it is. Other passages are clearly figurative, the notion of mornings and evenings without a sun to have them, makes that very clear.

Naturalistic argument - you've already indicated in other posts that God is supernatural (ex. we have a soul), so a naturalistic mental framework cannot arrive at the truth that involves both supernatural and natural events from a purely supernatural source. Was there light before the sun? Yes, see day 1 in the text. The presence (or absence) of objects (the sun) here does not define the passage of time, what God is communicating (the words, "evening and morning, day 4" communicates the passage of time and how much time had elapsed since the events of the prior day). A day is still a day whether it is cloudy or whether an object passes in front of the sun's light (ex. the moon in the case of a solar eclipse) - a day is an understood convention of time.

First, if God uses figurative speech, it is still authoritative. Second, in Genesis 1:1, He tells us what was there in the beginning, and male and female were not there.

The truth is what God speaks - not just catchy jingles or quips. God created them in the beginning both male and female. The context: Jesus is referring to "the beginning", not the literal verse in Genesis 1:1 where we find the actual words, "In the beginning..." but rather "the beginning" as a whole in referring to the creation week (Again, like if I say "back in the day" is a period of time). Adam and Eve were created, as Jesus said, in the beginning, male and female. Evolution would say it is far more efficient for an organism to be asexual, but God's word communicates that His purpose was different (which we see today, male and female) and He designed this for His covenant of marriage.

Yes, so if Jesus thought it was literal history, He would not have made that statement. If it was literal history, than either Genesis or Jesus would have to be wrong.

The modern revision touted by Young Earth creationism is rife with such self-contradictions.

Illogical. Maybe I'm just not understanding or following what you are meaning here. If I wanted to defend the truth, I wouldn't first say to myself, "Wait, did that actually happen? Yes it did. Well I better not bring that up then to the pharisees." That makes no sense. Maybe you're thinking Jesus would have been referring to day 1 and therefore been wrong? If so, see my comments above.

I accept all of the Bible as true and it is my world view. This view existed before ideas of literal days in Genesis ever arrived on the scene, before the term evolution ever existed, so we cannot say it is some new-age idea that was invented in the minds of say, Charles Darwin, St. Augustine, or Spurgeon.[/QUOTE]

The old earth view did not exist before Genesis arrived on the scene. See referenced articles below. You'll see dates largely pointing to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The first one (talk origins) in fact suggests that in 1600 the earth was largely believed to be 6,000 years old. These references also give an account of the names of the early scientists and philosophers that contributed to the age now largely accepted within the scientific community. St. Augustine came after the Bible was written, especially Genesis (1400 BC +/-).

Changing Views of the History of the Earth
How Science Figured Out the Age of Earth

To the topic of the thread, while I believe the scientific method has remained largely unchanged over time, the assertions as to the age of the earth have changed significantly as also demonstrated by these articles. We'll give it another 100 years or so to see what science touts as the real truth, assuming the Church is still around at that time. Even many who graduated 30 and 40 years ago in the fields of geology, biology, etc... will admit that what they were taught has largely changed. What never changes and what will never fall away is the word of God.

I think the way we shape our world view is persuaded by what we're taught and what we believe seems reasonable/sensible. Not relevant to the topic here (just curious), what are your thoughts around the ages given around Adam, Seth, Methuselah, etc... where they lived to be upwards of 969 years old?

Thank you brother -

 

[NobleMouse]

Doesn't matter. There are abundant transitional whales in the fossil record. His statement:

"We do not possess a single fossil of the transitional forms between the aforementioned land animals [i.e., carnivores and ungulates] and the whales."

Was written before we had any of the transitional fossils:
E.J. Slijper, Dolphins and Whales (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1962)

When I was in college, there weren't transitionals for whales, turtles, frogs, ants, and a host of other things. But in the past 50 years, a lot of things have turned up.

Something more recent then:
http://askjohnmackay.com/whale-evol...howing-whales-have-evolved-from-land-animals/

Barbarian observes:
Both speciation and the evolution of new complex features have been directly observed. The evolution of a spiral valve in a species of Italian lizard that arrived on an island with a much different environment took a couple of decades.

Evolution, yes. Adaptation is evolution that makes a population more fit to the environment. Evolving a complex new organ is one way that can happen.

This is not the same as the assertion that evolution makes when it says life progressively evolved from pond scum to the scientists of today. There are barriers not being crossed, that need to be crossed, in order for the broad assertions made by Darwinian evolution to be true.

A population of lizards that evolved a complex new structure. Just what creationists said could not happen.

Perhaps a stereotypical creationist might say such. I believe we can have adaptation to an environment; but the fossil record, nor that ever directly observed supports life emerging from a mitochondrial molecule. If we loosely use the word evolution to mean anything including my skin becoming darker in the sun then in that sense 'evolution' exists, but in stepping up progressively from essentially a simple bacteria to becoming a human, then no not ever.

Even Darwin did that. In Descent of Man, he pointed out the survival value of morality for social animals like humans.

I would disagree on that, he came to his conclusion and then back-filled in other ideas to fit his premature conclusion. This is a type of circular reasoning where instead of proving something true, one forms a conclusion based upon one set of factors, then as an afterthought states that some other factor must be true so as to fit with the conclusion they already formed without taking that other factor into consideration in first forming the conclusion. Nothing about consciousness, morality, and a soul can be explained by Darwinian evolution, but rather than questioning the validity of the theory, He casually said that it makes sense for social animals to have morals... yet there is nothing in the underlying biological DNA to support morals, a conscience, or a soul. And so, the rebuttal seems to be that God suffixed that in at the end.

The one that's actually from God, is consistent with evolution. The one from man (creationism), is not.

Odd that God's word would have explicitly said He created animals and man on the same day, male and female, man from the dust of the ground (not other animals), that other OT and NT authors and Jesus would affirm this, but in reality leave the "real' truth for the scientists to discover. I speak more on this in my other responses so will not belabor here.

Since the Bible lists two separate and contradictory genealogies for Christ, it's pretty clear that they are not meant to be literally true.

Not contradictory, just need to understand the nature of the two genealogies between Matthew and Luke:
The Genealogies of Matthew and Luke
Why are there Two Genealogies for Jesus? | Truth Or Tradition?

Of course we can. And geologists, for example, have made predictions based on those data, which turned out to be correct. So we know it's right.

Without having really been there and really observed, nothing is 'known' in the strictest sense - they are educated guesses. It is not my goal to in any way diminish the intelligence of scientists or discredit the work being done, but rather to illustrate that there exists two paradigms here (I operate under a paradigm as well).

There is no rock or fossil that comes with a tag giving it's age or relation to any other physical matter. To determine age is to infer based upon known characteristics. If you and I met in person and we looked at each other, could we reasonably determine each other's age? Probably, right? How is that so? If I have gray or white hair thin hair, wrinkly skin, etc... you may conclude that I am older, but if my skin is tight, my eyes are bright, my hair is full of color and vibrancy you may conclude that I am young. How would you know that though? Well, you'd know that because we (people) have seen the human life cycle complete itself from start to finish many many times, and there are many examples of every age along the spectrum available to observe right now. The problem with these assertions of evolution and billions of years is that we've not seen the molecule become a rat, or a rat become an ape, a dinosaur become a bird, whatever the connection, etc... we've not seen a million or a billion years pass by to know for sure the effect such time would have on our planet, we did not witness the events of the past and in many cases have not seen an event from the present leave behind evidence that looks like evidence left behind from an same event in the past to know it was the same thing being repeated. There is no working model when it comes to earth's past, so all that can be done is to make inferences. You've never seen a dinosaur become a bird, but because we see a fossil that looks like a bird, but yet has a few features in places similar to a dinosaur the conclusion is that the one became the other through the process of evolution.

Even with the Lenski experiment with E. Coli after 50,000 generations, the E. Coli was still E. Coli (not some other bacteria). This is like 1 million years on a human timescale. The most notable outcome from the E. Coli experiment was the ability to grow on citrate (adaptation), but still remained E. Coli, which is consistent with what is observed here in the present (adaptation to environment - yes, changing into something difference than the originating life form - no), and is consistent with what would be understood from the Bible that God made each according to their kind. There is no universal common ancestor to life, we don't need billions of years to evolve from a banana to a human because God created bananas (day 3 - yes, before the sun - light and water already existed) and He created humans (day 6).

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
You do. Unless you reject the "life ex nihilism" doctrine of YE creationism, you reject God's creation.

I disapprove of the unobserved assertions made by science...

The argument that we can't know anything unless we saw it happen isn't a very good one. Forensics, for example, shows that to be a false assertion.

Barbarian, regarding the false claim that science denies God:
Oh, the creationist straw man. That's not what science says.

No no, science does say God didn't do it (at all in fact)

Nope. Can't. Science is limited by its methodology to only consider the physical universe. Hence, it can't make any statements at all about the supernatural.

Barbarian observes:
Evolution isn't about the way life began.

Abiogenesis is the conceptual mechanism that secular science uses to explain how life began

Sorry, not part of evolutionary theory; it makes no claims about the origin of life. Abiogenesis is a different idea, that the earth brought forth life. God says so, too.

Evolution; however, asserts that from the first primordial molecule, all life arose,

Nope. Darwin, for example, just supposed that God created the first living things. You've been badly misled about that.

Homology is what I described (it looks similar)

No. That's analogy. You've confused homology (related structures modified to new appearences and functions) with analogy (looks similar).

and speciation are just subtle changes to adapt to the environment

Speciation is evolution that is sufficient to bring on reproductive isolation. It appears that you don't know what "evolution" means. Just for the record, what do you think the scientific definition of "evolution" is?

Barbarian asks:
Since it's been observed to happen, that's too bad for them. But if you'd like to post these well-qualified biologists and their claims, we can talk about it. What do you have?

Nope, nobody ever saw a molecule become a bird.

And a good thing for evolutionary theory; it would be in huge trouble if something like that ever happened. But you're unable to show us these "well-qualified biologists?" Why is that?

I don't doubt God works all things together for His purposes, but you bring up Ecclesiastes 9:11 out of context here as if to support random mutation as part of God's purpose.

Time and chance happens to everything. To deny the role of chance and contingency in divine providence, is to contradict God. Let Him be God, and accept it His way.

Here was the statement I made: "The Bible does not use the word 'evolution' or describe a process that sounds like what science describes today, is true."

As it doesn't mention protons, or bacteria, or DNA. There are lots of things that are true, that aren't in the Bible.

To expound, I was indicating that just because the Bible does not fill in all imaginable information from the creation events recorded in Genesis, this is not an open invitation where we can just invent and insert anything that sounds good.

Nevertheless, YE creationists do exactly that. Making up stories to fill in the gaps in their new doctrines, they have to add new ideas to scripture.

Barbarian observes:
Some of it is. Other passages are clearly figurative, the notion of mornings and evenings without a sun to have them, makes that very clear.

Naturalistic argument

Nope. Religious argument by St. Augustine, reflecting the views of the early Christians.

Was there light before the sun?

But "morning" has a specific meaning, when the sun rises. It doesn't mean "light somewhere." So we know it's not a literal day with literal mornings and evenings. And that's not new; it was realized long before anyone realized anything about evolution.

Barbarian observes:
First, if God uses figurative speech, it is still authoritative. Second, in Genesis 1:1, He tells us what was there in the beginning, and male and female were not there.

The truth is what God speaks - not just catchy jingles or quips. God created them in the beginning both male and female. The context: Jesus is referring to "the beginning", not the literal verse in Genesis 1:1 where we find the actual words, "In the beginning..." but rather "the beginning" as a whole in referring to the creation week (Again, like if I say "back in the day" is a period of time). Adam and Eve were created, as Jesus said, in the beginning, male and female.

So, from the beginning of humans. That's what He meant. But as you now see, the "days" of creation are not periods of time, but categories of creation as the early Christians realized. The modern revision of YE creationism was never orthodoxy.

Evolution would say it is far more efficient for an organism to be asexual

No. That makes it much harder for a population to adapt quickly, whereas the sorting of alleles in sexual reproduction means a population can evolve more quickly to adapt. Depending on the circumstances, sexual or asexual reproduction could be more advantageous.

Barbarian observes:
I accept all of the Bible as true and it is my world view. This view existed before ideas of literal days in Genesis ever arrived on the scene, before the term evolution ever existed, so we cannot say it is some new-age idea that was invented in the minds of say, Charles Darwin, St. Augustine, or Spurgeon.

As far as the idea that certain people were allowed by God to literally live far past the three score and ten that the Bible says is a human lifespan, there's no reason that He could not do it. However, it makes absolutely no difference as far as salvation is concerned, so I don't worry about it.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Doesn't matter. There are abundant transitional whales in the fossil record. His statement:

"We do not possess a single fossil of the transitional forms between the aforementioned land animals [i.e., carnivores and ungulates] and the whales."

Was written before we had any of the transitional fossils:
E.J. Slijper, Dolphins and Whales (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1962)

When I was in college, there weren't transitionals for whales, turtles, frogs, ants, and a host of other things. But in the past 50 years, a lot of things have turned up.

Something more recent then:
http://askjohnmackay.com/whale-evol...howing-whales-have-evolved-from-land-animals/

http://askjohnmackay.com/whale-evol...howing-whales-have-evolved-from-land-animals/

This is just someone denying what the fossil record shows. To pick out one feature, the sequence of fossils shows how nostrils slowly moved backwards from the nose to form blowholes. Would you like to see that? There are many, many other such features in the transitional whales we now know about.

This is not the same as the assertion that evolution makes when it says life progressively evolved from pond scum to the scientists of today.

Evolutionary theory makes no such claims. It's not about how life began.

Perhaps a stereotypical creationist might say such. I believe we can have adaptation to an environment; but the fossil record, nor that ever directly observed supports life emerging from a mitochondrial molecule.

That's not evolutionary theory. Darwin himself just supposed that God made the first living things.

If we loosely use the word evolution to mean anything including my skin becoming darker in the sun

Then we'd be making the same error creationists do.

Nothing about consciousness, morality, and a soul can be explained by Darwinian evolution, but rather than questioning the validity of the theory, He casually said that it makes sense for social animals to have morals...

Social animals tend to have morality because it enhances survival. As Darwin pointed out.

yet there is nothing in the underlying biological DNA to support morals, a conscience, or a soul.

Souls, being given directly by God, are not measurable or open to scientific inquiry. Morality and conscience are open to such inquiry. Turns out that apes and dogs (among others) do have elementary notions of fairness and even altruism. Would you like to learn about that?

Odd that God's word would have explicitly said He created animals and man on the same day, male and female, man from the dust of the ground (not other animals),

He says animals were produced from the Earth, so you have that to consider.

that other OT and NT authors and Jesus would affirm this

What is your evidence that if Jesus repeats an allegory, it becomes literal history?

Not contradictory, just need to understand the nature of the two genealogies between Matthew and Luke:

I've read the various attempts to fix the problem. Since none of them have an basis in scripture, they are unconvincing to me.

There is no rock or fossil that comes with a tag giving it's age or relation to any other physical matter.

Nevertheless, we can date them from the evidence within. Not too long ago, argon/argon testing accurately got the date of the eruption that buried Pompeii. Remarkable that such a recent event would be accurately measured, but it was. Would you like to learn about that?

There is no working model when it comes to earth's past

But there is. And as you see, from the Pompeii event, it's been tested and verified.

You've never seen a dinosaur become a bird

I've never seen a giant redwood grow to maturity from a seed. Nevertheless, the evidence shows me that they do. The argument that evolution is change too great to every observe in a lifetime, so it can't be true, is pretty transparent, isn't it?

 

[NobleMouse]

The argument that we can't know anything unless we saw it happen isn't a very good one. Forensics, for example, shows that to be a false assertion.

I don't think that black-and-white about it... we can infer some things, but your example on forensics is about events happening in the recent present, not things that happened billions of years ago... aples to rocks analogy.

Nope. Can't. Science is limited by its methodology to only consider the physical universe. Hence, it can't make any statements at all about the supernatural.

So if science is limited by methodology and cannot explain the supernatural and there was supernatural in the beginning of the physical universe then science cannot arrive at the truth. Where are all of the scientific articles even mentioning God in how anything came to be?

Sorry, not part of evolutionary theory; it makes no claims about the origin of life. Abiogenesis is a different idea, that the earth brought forth life. God says so, too.

Agreed, and so renders evolution false.

Nope. Darwin, for example, just supposed that God created the first living things. You've been badly misled about that.

I just pulled this off the the internet:
"All life on Earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal common ancestor"
See the following. This is exactly what science is claiming today. If you say evolution does not make this assertion of a universal common ancestor, then it is not evolution that you believe but your own version that you've invented:
Behold LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of Life on Earth | Smart News | Smithsonian
Darwin was Right | All species share a common descent
For all life to have a common ancestor, there must be a singularity life form from which all life arose.

No. That's analogy. You've confused homology (related structures modified to new appearences and functions) with analogy (looks similar).

I looked up homology before I responded to you in my last post:
"the state of having the same or similar relation, relative position, or structure."
Similar relation, relative position, structure (ie. looks similar).

Speciation is evolution that is sufficient to bring on reproductive isolation. It appears that you don't know what "evolution" means. Just for the record, what do you think the scientific definition of "evolution" is?

See above, these web sites give what I consider to be evolution... if this is incorrect, then the fault is doubly on science for (1) making assertions that were never observed and in the absence of reading their Bibles, and (2) for not being able to communicate clearly.

And a good thing for evolutionary theory; it would be in huge trouble if something like that ever happened. But you're unable to show us these "well-qualified biologists?" Why is that?

I provided the web site and will paste a snipped from the download that gives the names (these are just a few):
Dusan Fiala Ph.D Biophysics/Systems Biology De Montfort University
PremRaj Pushpakaran Ph.D Biotechnology Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India
Dudley Eirich Ph.D Microbiology University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
Guy F. Birkenmeier Ph.D Biochemistry Washington State University

It's a 23-page download and there's a person with a biology-related degree on almost every page...

Time and chance happens to everything. To deny the role of chance and contingency in divine providence, is to contradict God. Let Him be God, and accept it His way.

Your entire argument for random mutation seems to bank on 1 verse while all of Genesis, as well as OT authors, NT authors, and Jesus all affirm God having a direct role in creating the life forms we see present today... including whales.

As it doesn't mention protons, or bacteria, or DNA. There are lots of things that are true, that aren't in the Bible.

And presence of those do not run perpendicular to scripture. Seems when scientists start making up stories about the past and events they never saw is when things run into trouble.

Nevertheless, YE creationists do exactly that. Making up stories to fill in the gaps in their new doctrines, they have to add new ideas to scripture.

Example... I'll find the verse(s).

Nope. Religious argument by St. Augustine, reflecting the views of the early Christians.

But "morning" has a specific meaning, when the sun rises. It doesn't mean "light somewhere." So we know it's not a literal day with literal mornings and evenings. And that's not new; it was realized long before anyone realized anything about evolution.

Morning is simply light rising in the east and this really depends on how you view it. Again, what is the context? We've got events and the passage of time. God is telling us the events as well as how much time is passing is He not? How much time is passing in a day with evening and morning? A good clue you're twisting the definition is when you're having to delve so far in, reading between lines, looking for allegories, imagery, etc... over simple words: day, evening, morning. It's not complicated, these are just regular days. This is evidence of the confusion one has to apply in a sort of self mental fake out where you repeat to yourself enough times that something means something it doesn't until you no longer belief it. If you prefer a long, drawn out explanation on the yom's of Genesis, here you go:
G. F. Hasel - The "Days" of Creation in Genesis 1

So, from the beginning of humans. That's what He meant. But as you now see, the "days" of creation are not periods of time, but categories of creation as the early Christians realized. The modern revision of YE creationism was never orthodoxy.

The days are not periods, but you're free to interpret as you wish. You cannot really fault creationists for "inventing things that don't exist in the Bible" when they read days with evening and morning as being... days with evening and morning. The inventing takes place when we start believing things that aren't in the Bible and not believing things that are in the Bible.

No. That makes it much harder for a population to adapt quickly, whereas the sorting of alleles in sexual reproduction means a population can evolve more quickly to adapt. Depending on the circumstances, sexual or asexual reproduction could be more advantageous.

First you say no (as an absolute), then you finish by saying sexual or asexual reproduction could be more advantageous (circumstantially). Which one do you want to go with? Is this just conjecture?

As far as the idea that certain people were allowed by God to literally live far past the three score and ten that the Bible says is a human lifespan, there's no reason that He could not do it. However, it makes absolutely no difference as far as salvation is concerned, so I don't worry about it.

Thanks for the thoughts, I was just curious about whether you believe other aspects of Genesis or not. It seems odd to suggest that evolution would allow for the first humans to live for upwards of a thousand years but now with all of our medical advances and technology we're doing good to make it to 85 on average. Again, no issues with this idea for the creationist who "ignorantly" accepts God's word as truth in the face of "evidence" for evolution.

 

[The Barbarian]

(Barbarian notes the fallacy of supposing that we can't know anything we didn't personally see)

I don't think that black-and-white about it... we can infer some things, but your example on forensics is about events happening in the recent present, not things that happened billions of years ago...

Comes down to evidence. And predictions about (for example) radioisotope decay, have been verified by dating rocks of known age.

So if science is limited by methodology and cannot explain the supernatural and there was supernatural in the beginning of the physical universe then science cannot arrive at the truth.

It can, however, get good estimates for the age of the Earth, the evolution of whales, and so on.

Where are all of the scientific articles even mentioning God in how anything came to be?

That would be like faulting your auto mechanic for not being able to explain how angels fly.

Barbarian regarding the origin of life:
Sorry, not part of evolutionary theory; it makes no claims about the origin of life. Abiogenesis is a different idea, that the earth brought forth life. God says so, too.

Agreed, and so renders evolution false.

Nope. Just limits evolutionary theory to the way populations change over time.

I just pulled this off the the internet:
"All life on Earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal common ancestor"

Yep. Genetics nails that down. All known life on Earth is essentially one kind. And we know it works, because we can check the genes of organisms of known descent.

See the following. This is exactly what science is claiming today. If you say evolution does not make this assertion of a universal common ancestor,

You're confusing the fact of a common ancestor for all living things, with the origin of life. Two different things.

For all life to have a common ancestor, there must be a singularity life form from which all life arose.

But evolutionary theory doesn't say how it came about. See the difference?

I looked up homology before I responded to you in my last post:
"the state of having the same or similar relation, relative position, or structure."

Not bad. Notice, it doesn't say "looks similar." That would be analogy, not homology.

(ie. looks similar).

Nope. Birds and bats look similar. Thats analogy.

Bat wings and whale fins evolved from the same structure. That's homology.

See the difference?

Your entire argument for random mutation seems to bank on 1 verse

God said it. And since nothing he said contradicts evolution, there you are, again.

while all of Genesis, as well as OT authors, NT authors, and Jesus all affirm God having a direct role in creating the life forms we see present today... including whales.

Of course. You just don't approve of the way He did it.

Morning is simply light rising in the east

No. it's the Sun rising in the East. A big light in the sky doesn't mean morning.

that something means something it doesn't until you no longer belief it. If you prefer a long, drawn out explanation on the yom's of Genesis, here you go:
G. F. Hasel - The "Days" of Creation in Genesis 1

First you say no

You're very wrong. Evolutionists note that sexual or asexual reproduction will be optimal, depending on conditions.

And the question of how long some patriarchs lived really has no purpose in our salvation. We do have a pretty good idea, from human remains, how long people lived in various ages, but it really doesn't matter at all in terms of your relationship to God.

Focusing on those things takes you away from what He's telling you in scripture.

 

[NobleMouse]

(Barbarian notes the fallacy of supposing that we can't know anything we didn't personally see)

Comes down to evidence. And predictions about (for example) radioisotope decay, have been verified by dating rocks of known age.

Thank you for the replies brother! As for radioisotope decay, is this like the dating of rocks formed during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 showing to be 350,000 years old? Reality shows that radiometric dating is not a fool-proof test. It is circumstantial (the usual rebuttal is that young rocks don't date well), and further it is built upon numerous assumptions like knowing the ratio of parent to daughter atoms, knowing the system was closed, and knowing the rate of decay is always constant (even though it has been demonstrated in labs that the rate of decay can be accelerated by upwards of a factor of a billion) sources:

Billion-fold acceleration of radioactivity demonstrated in laboratory - creation.com
http://www.drwile.com/accelerated_decay.pdf
Stunning Evidence for Accelerated Radioactive Decay | Evolution Dismantled

If radiometric dating was so accurate then there would be no need to include an area on the form being submitted along with the sample for dating where the geologist provides and expected date range. If the sample dates differently than what is expected, the explanation is that something like leaching occurred (not a closed system). In short, there is a presupposed, expected age range and if the radiometric dating results come back within that range then presto, the radiometric dating confirmed the "known age of the rock" just as you have stated.

It can, however, get good estimates for the age of the Earth, the evolution of whales, and so on.

I don't believe enough is truly "known" to broadly make this assertion. For some reason, people seem to think because they can describe the effects of events from God's creation that this means they "know" how it works - like being able to predict that when someone gets into their car and turns the key in the ignition switch that the front of the car will make a loud noise from the engine and fumes will emit from the exhaust pipe and then say they fully know how a car works yet without any understanding of the inner mechanics of what is actually taking place. In fairness, I too cannot claim to know how things work

That would be like faulting your auto mechanic for not being able to explain how angels fly.

What I meant, in the context, was: "So if science is limited by methodology and cannot explain the supernatural and there was supernatural in the beginning of the physical universe then science cannot arrive at the truth. Where are all of the scientific articles even mentioning God in how anything came to be?"
This is to illustrate that secular science has a bias and it is not towards God and the truth of the Bible (otherwise we'd see mention of him in scientific journals/articles). This is not an issue for the atheist. For the Christian; however, if we believe the Bible is true, is historical, is inerrant, and is profitable for learning (on multiple levels) then there needs to be a bias towards biblical truth. Since the scientific method does not include a step that directs the scientist to the Bible, we know that supernatural causes affecting the physical universe are not considered: Jesus being born of a virgin - cannot be explained, the veil in the Holy of Holies being torn from top to bottom when Jesus died on the cross - cannot be explained, every miracle... every person Jesus raised from the dead - cannot be explained, creation itself by a supernatural being - cannot be explained. None of these can be explained by secular science... again, only if you believe the Bible is true, inerrant, and historical. I do believe secular science may periodically stumble across truths that could be discerned from the Bible, but because there is not a bias towards the truth of the Bible, naturally this opens a wide door for erroneous conclusions that would not be biblically supported.

Barbarian regarding the origin of life:
Sorry, not part of evolutionary theory; it makes no claims about the origin of life. Abiogenesis is a different idea, that the earth brought forth life. God says so, too.

God brought forth creeping things, birds, fish, man, beasts of the fields, livestock, etc... You've generalized the Bible to try to make it fit with abiogenesis; however, God was specific. Scientifically, abiogenesis has never been proven or demonstrated, even under the unrealistic and most optimal settings in a controlled laboratory environment:
The Miller Urey Experiment - Windows to the Universe
End result of the Miller/Urey experiment: Life Not Created

Yep. Genetics nails that down. All known life on Earth is essentially one kind. And we know it works, because we can check the genes of organisms of known descent.

I believe that is unbiblical. Here is why: God explicitly stated He created each according to their own kind (not one universal, singular kind as a wound-up mechanism that was just set loose to run on its own for several billion years) and you have just verified that what secular science asserts to be true, is biased and this bias is not towards the truth of the Bible (otherwise the conclusions of both would be similar/analogous in their respective messages).

You're confusing the fact of a common ancestor for all living things, with the origin of life. Two different things.

God is the origin(ator) of life and He did not create a universal common ancestor - as we are told, He created a diversity of life in the beginning (otherwise the process of Adam naming the beasts of the field and birds of the air would have gone rather awkwardly... one bacteria giving names to other bacteria?). Again, for the atheist this is a non-issue. For the Christian, we're told by Jesus in Matthew 12:30, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Do we believe God and that all things were created by and through Jesus (see John 1:1-4). It goes on to state, "...All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." Your view of evolution would suggest God did not make everything, that He only made the first form of life and then let "mother nature" take over through random mutation and natural selection.

But evolutionary theory doesn't say how it came about. See the difference?

I understand that abiogenesis attempts to explain how life came from non-life whereas evolution attempts to explain, after abiogenesis, how life grew in complexity to what we see today. Am I getting closer?

Not bad. Notice, it doesn't say "looks similar." That would be analogy, not homology.
Nope. Birds and bats look similar. Thats analogy.

Semantics... if I see something that is in similar relation, relative position, or structure I would describe it as looking similar.

Bat wings and whale fins evolved from the same structure. That's homology.
See the difference?

Bat wings and whale fins were created by the same creator to function in a similar environment (earth) and thus have similar structures (because of physical laws that God upholds), made up of similar cells (because God created life and saw that it was 'good' by His standard, thus makes no sense to use a different type of mechanism to perform a similar task, all made up of similar atoms (for the same reason as cells). See the truth?

God said it. And since nothing he said contradicts evolution, there you are, again.

Nothing God said contradicts He created a diversity of complex life during the creation week. Unlike evolution where you are inferring this in the absence of any text giving rise to this notion, the text positively and explicitly affirms that God created a diversity of complex life during the creation week, not a universal common ancestor (see Genesis 1:20-28).

No. it's the Sun rising in the East. A big light in the sky doesn't mean morning.

I will show you how this logic is flawed. First, let's assume that billions of years did pass during the creation account and that a day can only occur where there is a physical sun (star) present to allow for a sunrise (morning) and sunset (evening)... and this did not occur until what is labeled as "day 4" (see Genesis 1:14-16). You still have major problems because your prior argument and what you are continuing to stand behind here is that a day cannot be a day unless the sun is rising and setting. While I still don't buy it, and the text in Genesis does not shift or change in any way to suggest that a different passage of time is occurring before and after the placement of the 'greater light to rule the day', let's just roll with this idea here that a day, in the 24-hr sense, doesn't happen until day 4, end of day when the sun and moon and stars are created:

Now it is the beginning of day 5, the sun exists and the creatures of the oceans and birds are being created. During this time, 24 hours passes (because the sun is now rising and setting, there is evening and there is morning) and now it is day 6. Now it is the beginning of day 6, and the beasts of the field, the creeping things, the livestock, and man are all created. During the day 6 events, 24 hours passes again and the events of days 5 and 6 are completed prior to the close of the day. See any problems with with the assertions of evolution yet? I do. Evolution states that man evolved from an ape-like creature millions of years ago and this, naturally, took a very long time. This process resulted in what we see today with modern man being distinct from modern day chimps, apes, and monkeys, etc... The Bible; however, states all of these were created on the same 24-hr day (remember, it's 24 hours now because the sun is present).

What I suspect you are doing is mentally throwing out all of the creation account of Genesis. You didn't like the idea of evening and morning without a sun for days 1 - 3 and so decided that even when the circumstances met your personal conditions for acceptance, you would still not accept the truth and instead dogmatically disregard all of it. You did this also with the genealogies - there are good and reasonable explanations for the minor variations between the lineages given of Christ going back to Adam, but because you prefer the 'truth' as told by secular science over what the Bible says, you glossed over the explanations, decided they were inadequate in satisfying your conditions and again threw out the entire lineage as just being wrong and/or irrelevant. For as long as humans have existed, according to secular science, that would be something like 100,000 generations (average of 20 years between generations). Even if there were errors in the lineages from Adam to Christ (which I do not believe there are errors, but rather different focuses/intentions behind the authors when proving the lineages), it is completely irrational and illogical to think that roughly 99,930 generations were skipped in the list. Separate from the lineages found in Matthew and Luke, other passages in the Bible affirm portions of these lineages and so it would seem credulous to so quickly believe such egregious errors exist in the word of God.

It seems you do not believe in the historicity and inerrancy of scripture. I could be wrong, this is just the perception that is coming across in our dialog. As you've pointed out this is not a salvation issue, but I would just encourage reconsidering that you can trust God on His word completely, even if it seems fantastic, even if it runs against the general view held by most. For me, I accept the ideas of a 6-day creation week and the earth being roughly 6,000 years old not on the basis of scientific evidence, but by faith. The ideas of the big bang, protoplanetary star dust forming into planets around young stars, abiogenesis, and evolution, absent the Bible are not implausible - that is while there are some significant challenges and absent some answers to nagging issues, the presence of challenges and absence of answers does not render these ideas impossible and so it is plausible for these ideas to support the present evidence. Similarly, the Bible does not give us all the answers and theories within a YEC scientific framework also have their own sets of challenges and absence of answers; however, are also not implausible in supporting the evidence present as well as supporting the discerned truths found in the Bible. Evidence and the interpretation of it aside though, I ultimately accept the age of the earth and how God fashioned life on the basis of what God says in His word. It is not a scientific text, not intended to be scientific, it is the truth from Him who is truth and light and these truths supersede scientific assertions made by man (whether from secular science or creationist scientists).

 

[The Barbarian]

(Barbarian notes the fallacy of supposing that we can't know anything we didn't personally see)

Comes down to evidence. And predictions about (for example) radioisotope decay, have been verified by dating rocks of known age.

Thank you for the replies brother! As for radioisotope decay, is this like the dating of rocks formed during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 showing to be 350,000 years old?

No, it isn't. The guys who did the argon/argon testing made sure there were not xenocrysts (unmelted material) in their samples. Austin, on the other hand, made sure that he included such material (which would be millions of years old). So he got the result he wanted by fudging his sample.

Xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts, and xenocrysts (like metamorphic and weathering features) are often easily identified under the microscope and sometimes even in the field. In some cases, a geologist may be interested in dating xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts, or the xenocrysts. However, obviously, if the geologist is interested in dating the younger matrix, he/she will look for and avoid any xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts or xenocrysts. While mainstream geologists know how to avoid xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts, and xenocrysts when dating igneous rocks, creationist Steve Austin apparently was not careful to avoid them when he conducted his "research" at Mt. St. Helens or the Grand Canyon, see " A Criticism of the ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project by Chris Stassen and compare with Excess Argon within Mineral Concentrates from the New Dacite Lava Dome at Mt. St. Helens Volcano, by Steven Austin. In his Mt. St. Helen's study, Austin collected what he thought was a freshly solidified dacite. He removed the gabbro xenoliths, but there's no mention if he found and removed any lighter colored, less obvious xenoliths, such as andesites or quartz diorites. Austin states that xenoliths of gabbro, quartz diorite, basalt, and andesite are common at the Mt. St. Helen site.

Figure 4 in Austin's report shows a photomicrograph from one of his dacite samples. Notice that the feldspars in the figure are zoned. The zoning indicates that the feldspars have a long cooling history. The cores of the feldspars could be hundreds of thousands or a few million years older than the rims. As others have pointed out at anti-creationism web sites, the zoning is probably why Austin got a K/Ar age of 340,000 years for his feldspar/glass concentrate. The glass may have crystallized in the 1980's as Austin expected, but the feldspars may be much older. Bowen's reaction series (Perkins, 1998, p. 93-95) states that olivines, pyroxenes and Ca-feldspars are the first minerals to crystallize out of a mafic to intermediate magma. As the magma cools and the temperature drops, hornblendes and more sodium-rich feldspars may crystallize. As the temperature continues to drop, feldspars even richer in sodium crystallize. By this time, the magma may reach the surface and the remaining melt may be rapidly quenched to a glass. If Austin really wanted to date the 1986 eruption, he should have only sampled the glass. This is NOT an easy task and it may not be possible with a messy rock like this dacite. Austin's K/Ar dates are consistent with Bowen's reaction series. The pyroxene fractions which should have crystallized first, provide the oldest ages of 1.7 -2.8 million years. The amphiboles, which crystallized later, are in a fraction that provided a younger age of 0.9 million years. His glass and feldspar fraction is probably a mixture of young glass, old Ca-feldspars, and sodium-rich feldspars that have an intermediate age. Not surprisingly, this mixture gave a younger age of about 340,000 years, but still much older than 1986 AD. His whole rock age was no doubt affected by a mixture of young glass, older feldspar and pyroxene phenocrysts and some possibly ancient xenocrysts or lightly colored (hard to see) xenoliths. In conclusion, Austin's results do NOTHING to refute the validity of K/Ar dating.
Comments on "The Radiometric Dating Game" - Part 1

Reality shows that radiometric dating is not a fool-proof test.

It isn't. If one is not careful, or is not honest, it's easy to get misleading results, as Austin did.

It is circumstantial (the usual rebuttal is that young rocks don't date well)

Typically, they don't, because so little decay has gone on. However, the Pompeii samples show argon/argon testing is remarkably good at young samples. Assuming that one doesn't include extraneous material, as Austin did.

and further it is built upon numerous assumptions like knowing the ratio of parent to daughter atoms,

Isochrons take care of that quite nicely.
An Animated Isochron Diagram

knowing the system was closed

In the case of argon, the system closes when the rock hardens. Hence the usefulness in knowing how long that has been.

and knowing the rate of decay is always constant (even though it has been demonstrated in labs that the rate of decay can be accelerated by upwards of a factor of a billion)

It would have to be accelerated by a factor of millions to fit YE timelines. But there's a catch. If it did, then the huge increase in radiation from decaying rocks would have fried all life on Earth. Moreover, we'd see such cooking in the rocks. And the conditions under which the acceleration would have happened, would have killed everything off, anyway. Your source says it requires over 200 million degrees Kelvin. The sun's core is, by comparison about 27 million degrees Kelvin.

Radium and silicon isotopes do seem to change their decay rates by much less than 1%, when there are a lot of solar flares, and are less active than measured in labs when there is less activity on the sun. However, that wouldn't help a YE scenario.

Barbarian observes:
(Science) can, however, get good estimates for the age of the Earth, the evolution of whales, and so on.

I don't believe enough is truly "known" to broadly make this assertion.

It's very well-established. And predictions based on this science have been tested and confirmed. So it's compelling.

What I meant, in the context, was: "So if science is limited by methodology and cannot explain the supernatural and there was supernatural in the beginning of the physical universe then science cannot arrive at the truth. Where are all of the scientific articles even mentioning God in how anything came to be?"

It would be like criticizing plumbing for not accurately predicting a hurricane. Science is only for studying the physical universe.

This is to illustrate that secular science has a bias and it is not towards God and the truth of the Bible

Like plumbing, it's entirely neutral on the question of God. However, scientists don't have to be. This is not an issue for a Christian, who doesn't need science to lead him to God. I suspect that's true of other religions as well.

Science doesn't deny the fact of miracles; it just can't explain how they happen. But then religion can't, either.

None of these can be explained by secular science...

Nor can plumbing. But plumbing is still a valid methodology that can give you accurate answers.

God brought forth creeping things, birds, fish, man, beasts of the fields, livestock, etc... You've generalized the Bible to try to make it fit with abiogenesis;

Abiogenesis (which is not evolution,remember) says that living things were produced by the earth. That's what God says, too.

I believe that is unbiblical. Here is why: God explicitly stated He created each according to their own kind

YE creationists accept this, too. They just don't like the way He did it.

Bat wings and whale fins were created by the same creator to function in a similar environment (earth) and thus have similar structures (because of physical laws that God upholds), made up of similar cells (because God created life and saw that it was 'good' by His standard, thus makes no sense to use a different type of mechanism to perform a similar task,

But He did. Bats use a different structure than birds, a mammalian structure rather than an avian one (feathers). This is analogy (looks similar) when the key to understanding is the homology (derived from the same structure). So bat wings, horses legs, human arms, and whale fins are all homologous, derived from the same tissues, indicating common descent. Insect and bird wings are different but look similar (analogous), and do not show common descent.

I will show you how this logic is flawed. First, let's assume that billions of years did pass during the creation account and that a day can only occur where there is a physical sun (star) present to allow for a sunrise (morning) and sunset (evening)... and this did not occur until what is labeled as "day 4" (see Genesis 1:14-16). You still have major problems because your prior argument and what you are continuing to stand behind here is that a day cannot be a day unless the sun is rising and setting. While I still don't buy it, and the text in Genesis does not shift or change in any way to suggest that a different passage of time is occurring before and after the placement of the 'greater light to rule the day', let's just roll with this idea here that a day, in the 24-hr sense, doesn't happen until day 4, end of day when the sun and moon and stars are created:

It's not about time at all. It's using "yom", ("this time") to describe categories of creation, not any particular length of time.
vages in the Bible affirm portions of these lineages and so it would seem credulous to so quickly believe such egregious errors exist in the word of God.

It seems you do not believe in the historicity and inerrancy of scripture.

Not all scripture is literal history. We know some it is allegory, since it says so.

Galatians 4:24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. If you insist that the Bible is inerrent, as opposed to infallible, then you have to believe that the sky is a dome over a flat Earth with windows in it, through which rain falls.

 

[Piet Strydom]

Science is the recording of natural occurrences such as Gravity, light, chemistry and more.
Once Newton recorded the science of gravity, it as accepted as fact due to testing his calculations and finding it was true.
This is experimental and physical science and Experimental Scientists uses this science to further the advancement of humanity. Electricity, Nuclear power plants, electronics etc, is but a few examples of Experimental and Physical science.
The science of the recording, calculation, and measuring of gravity will never change!
However, understanding what Gravity is, is a totally different story.
This is where Theoretical science enters the arena.
The people who practices Theoretical science, work on pure mathematical models and uses possible outcomes on assumptions they make to try to explain the things experimental science proved as fact.
They try to explain physics, Gravity, Light, origins of the Universe, energy, time, and so on.

In my point of view, the Theoretical scientists are creative thinkers and some times their thinking produces another branch of Physical experimental science, and the Physical scientists takes that science and produces incredible beautiful things to supply humankind with a better life.
However, many Theoretical scientists are simply using their research to further their own agenda.
they don't produce any productive science, but are using physical science as the platform to build more theories to further Atheism.

Look at Dawkins, Hawking, Singer, Craus, Linde and lots more.
All they do is to fall from one theory to the other once their silly claims was proven incorrect.

Therefore:
Science does not change, that is a myth!
Theoretical science changes, because it is Theory, and not proven fact.
Greetings

 

[Rion The Lion]

I all-too-often encounter the idea that science is untrustworthy because it changes, and only the Bible is trustworthy because it doesn't change.

No, science doesn't change. In fact, the opposite of your premise is true. As the bible is translated throughout the centuries, the precise meanings of its verses are slightly changed. The scientific laws of the universe, however, are resolute. Though our understanding of the sciences may change, the scientific laws themselves are eternal.